AS GLOBAL TEMPERATURES rise to record levels and places across the world see devastating weather events linked to climate change, the Trump administration has begun to roll back key environmental protections designed to transition the country off of fossil fuels. 

Since President Donald Trump’s second inauguration, the US has withdrawn from the Paris Agreement, the federal government has frozen funding for climate projects, dismantled programs aimed at curbing pollution, and planned mass reductions in staff at agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency. Lee Zeldin, the current EPA administrator, has promised to roll back protections for clean air and clean water. He has promised to take “historic actions” to deregulate fossil fuel power plants, reconsider emissions regulations on vehicles, and potentially scrap the endangerment finding – a document that underpins much of EPA’s regulatory authority.   

Trump himself has called climate change a “hoax.” He reaffirmed his commitment to fast-track oil and natural gas projects only hours into his second term, saying, “we’re going to drill, baby, drill.”   

Environmentalists, scientists, and other advocates working to decarbonize and mitigate the effects of climate change have decried these statements and sued his administration over many of the changes at the EPA. 

CommonWealth Beacon spoke to Gina McCarthy — the former head of the EPA under President Barack Obama and the first White House National Climate Advisor under President Joe Biden — about the impact of the Trump administration’s policies on Massachusetts and what can be done to keep pushing forward on climate goals. 

As EPA administrator, McCarthy signed the Clean Power Plan, which set the first-ever national standards for regulating power plant emissions in 2015. Under Biden, she implemented climate policy across federal agencies and pushed for the landmark Inflation Reduction Act which has provided large investments in climate change mitigation and adaptation. McCarthy is a Dorchester native and prior to joining the EPA, she served in different environmental roles under five different Massachusetts governors. She is currently a senior fellow at The Fletcher School’s Climate Policy Lab at Tufts University. 

The following interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.   

COMMONWEALTH BEACON: How is the Trump administration redefining the role of EPA? Can you talk about what the shift means and how it will impact the people and the environment in this country? 

GINA MCCARTHY: The mission of the EPA is to protect health and safety. It’s a very simple mission, but that mission is clearly being redefined under the Trump administration. It’s going to make life considerably more challenging, especially for people in communities that have been left behind — where there’s still a tremendous amount of work needed to meet EPA’s mission. 

One of the things we’re seeing right now at EPA is a real diminishment of the staff. The agency will not have the range of scientists it once had — if it has any remaining after this administration continues its efforts to reduce staff by what they hope will be 65 percent. We no longer have an Environmental Justice Office at EPA, and they are considering an entire redefinition of EPA’s mission 

We’re also seeing a rollback in millions — if not billions — of dollars that would have gone toward meeting the agency’s mission.  

In particular, it’s important to recognize that the current EPA administrator is redefining the agency’s mission as “unleashing American energy.” If you look closely at that, what they’re really talking about is advancing fossil fuels. 

CWB: The EPA has said that it will take action to deregulate fossil fuel power plants, reconsider emissions regulations on vehicles, and potentially scrap the endangerment finding that underpins much of EPA’s regulatory authority. What are the effects of these policy rollbacks that states like Massachusetts should be thinking about? 

MCCARTHY: My fear is that they’re not really reconsidering these rules — they’re looking at ways to ensure they are no longer implemented.  

One example is the Mercury and Air Toxic Standard, which I shepherded through the process when I was at EPA. That was an effort to understand the danger that mercury poses as it’s emitted from smokestacks and ends up going into lakes, getting in the fish, harming children’s health, and leading to poisoning or death in some instances. That is one of the rules under reconsideration.  

If you start adding up all these rollbacks, you realize they are fundamentally doing two things: 1) reducing Americans’ ability to stay healthy and safe and protect natural resources and 2) providing an opportunity for the agency itself and what it does in its mission to be destabilized. 

If rules made consistent with Congress’s directives or longstanding laws are up for grabs, the agency will have no stability. The people in our country will no longer be the focus of EPA in the same way that they have been over the past decades. My main concern is that this also includes a dismantling of the agency itself. 

CWB: These changes are coming at a critical time when temperatures are rising, storms are intensifying, and wildfires are devastating communities. Can you give us a sense of what these rollbacks will mean for the fight against climate change? 

MCCARTHY:  The fight to address climate change is one that needs to be a big fight, not a small tweak. Even the rules that EPA has available to it now won’t stop the climate from changing.  

These actions are not the end all be all, but it is taking the United States totally out of the picture in terms of the international community. Every other country recognizes that climate change is happening, that it’s real, and that we need to address it in an international context if we want to slow down the progress that climate change itself is making. 

The instability of the world in which we live, all of these terrible fires that we are seeing, all of this unsettling weather is a reflection of the change in the climate that’s already happened. It will simply continue to get exacerbated, especially if one of the largest and richest countries decides to pull out of this effort.  

These changes [from the Trump administration] are all intended to deny that climate change exists. They are ensuring that scientists who work on climate are silenced by basically eliminating them from the federal agencies. It’s an effort not just to question science but to silence it.  

It’s absolutely shocking and mind boggling and should be to everyone in this country that our leaders are actually denying the biggest existential risk of our time.  

CWB: How do the Trump administration’s actions taken together impact individual states? 

MCCARTHY:  It will be a significant disadvantage to every single state if the federal government diminishes its resources and its capabilities across the country to protect human health and the environment. 

What you’re seeing here across the states is an effort to basically take away services that have been provided to those states for decades. Like FEMA response when there is a problem. Now, this administration wants to delegate that to states.  

Do you realize that 40 percent of EPA’s total budget goes directly to states? The reason is that states don’t have the resources to protect themselves the way that the federal government has.  

States are now beginning to be the place where the federal government goes to die because they don’t want to do that work anymore. And they’re demanding that states do it with full knowledge that states don’t have the full authority or the kind of resources they need to do anything near what the federal government has been doing for decades and decades.  

This is a turnaround that will do nothing but limit the ability of folks that are living in states to have healthier air and cleaner water. Most states — in fact, most Republican states — don’t have the kind of state resources they need to fill the gap when the federal government decides to drop programs. 

CWB: What can states do to fill the gap left by the federal government? 

MCCARTHY:  States have to work together. We only have a car rule [stricter emissions standards on vehicles] because 12 states have aligned together with EPA to make cleaner air because of a demand across those states. We only have cleaner air because we have had the ability to work with states to define a path that could get them there. State efforts are essential. 

CWB: What tools do states like Massachusetts have to maintain stricter air and water standards? 

MCCARTHY: A lot of the larger states which have good resources — like Massachusetts — can defend themselves. They can move forward. Many states have the ability to develop their own regulations and rulemaking.  

But we cannot do what the federal government does. It is simply impossible. We do not have the expertise at the state level that EPA has to develop regulations and to enforce them. There are some things that are not delegated to state authority, and you cannot do it.  

It’s going to take a long time for states to figure out how they can power up their resources in their staffing to fill those gaps. It will be a significant step backward for our country and our states. 

CWB: What kind of work can be done? Do you see hope anywhere for climate progress? 

MCCARTHY: We do have to have hope. We have to understand that our opportunities are tremendous. 

When [the Trump] EPA makes decisions that go to litigation, most often the agency has to continue with that work until the litigation is settled.  

As much as this federal government wants to ignore clean energy, they can’t because clean energy in the US has brought more power generating capacity online in 2024 than it has in the past 20 years. It’s crazy. It’s huge. It’s exciting.  

People want to see clean energy because it’s advancing. It’s an investment in people, in jobs, in health, and in economic growth.  

People need to understand that between litigation and the excitement of the new technologies and the clean energy we have, we have time to reverse this. We have time to step up. But people are going to need to step up. 

They’re going to have to ask their states to step in when the federal government goes away as best they can. They’re going to have to maintain their level of excitement and hope that the clean energy world advances.  

CWB: You’ve written a satirical essay called “Make America Suck Again,” praising President Trump after he issued an executive order banning paper straws in favor of plastic straws. What made you do that? 

MCCARTHY:  I just did it to amuse myself, to be honest with you. I had been getting so serious and so concerned that I realized I needed to lighten up. When I saw, in the middle of a presidential executive order, something that was so ludicrous as that, I just had to make fun of it. 

It was basically praising the president for protecting us from the ravages of paper straws and touting the benefits of kids and others who could literally spend their lives sucking on petroleum products, which is what plastic straws are made from. 

People have to read things like that and realize that they’re all tongue-in-cheek. But the point was: How silly is it that a president of the United States would write that? How incredibly ridiculous is it that a president of the United States would demand that straws have to be plastic?  

The post ‘We have time to reverse this. We have time to step up’ appeared first on CommonWealth Beacon.

While the winter winds battered away at the south coast of Nantucket, the island hummed along in year-round mode. Around 14,200 people puttered into work, sent their kids to the local schools, hit up the few dozen restaurants open during the off-season, and dodged downtown when the tides rushed in and flooded over brick and cobblestone. 

Before the high summer season roars in, when the population booms to 80,000, the wind and the water will have carved off more of the island, prompting some returning seasonal residents to pace around their properties with a wary eye on the bluff’s edge. 

“If people aren’t there during the winter, and they’re not seeing some of the biggest impacts and changes to the beach,” said Cynthia Dittbrenner, vice president of natural resources for The Trustees of Reservations. “So they come back to this beautiful, occasionally tragic, scene of erosion,” she said. “But if you’re there in the winter, you’re experiencing these incredible storms and the winds, and you see the erosion happening first-hand right in front of you. It’s like an education tool.” 

Across the Cape and Islands – the region with the highest share of seasonal housing in Massachusetts – headlines and eyeballs have been transfixed on the bluff-side luxury vacation homes tumbling into the ocean or threatening to do so.  

The region is already struggling with the workforce impacts of changing housing patterns while trying to maintain the seaside tourist draw that’s essential to local economies. A 2022 state assessment noted that a major consequence of climate change on the Cape and Islands is a reduction in affordable housing availability and tourist attractions and amenities.  

This is creating a housing crunch and a climate crisis at the same time – demand for these sandy, tony shores conflicting with the need to literally shore up the coastline.   

Groundwater is rising, low-lying areas are regularly flooding, and the ocean is slowly turning some peninsulas into islands, but there’s nothing like a house toppling into the sea to drive the point home: plan or paddle. 

And regardless, someone has to pay. 

The anecdotes, at first blush, seem like first-world math problems.

If a $5.5 million home nearly falls off a cliff in Wellfleet, who foots the bill? If a house bought on an eroding beach on Nantucket drops in value from $2.2 million to $200,000, but needs another $200,000 of work before the town finally orders it demolished, was it worth it? If the value of homes across the coast more than doubled during a global pandemic and the water continues to rise, who can afford or be able to live there now?  

The demand for coastal houses is quickly bumping up against the reality of nature, with soaring pandemic prices dropping along some of the more erosion-prone shorelines.  

At-risk houses pose a threat to more than the owners’ wallets. The saga of a controversial 5,100-square foot Wellfleet mansion entered its final chapter this year, after it was purchased for $5.5 million in 2021 despite the fact that wind and water had already clawed the bluffs dangerously near the sprawling house.  

A 2024 report prepared for Wellfleet by Bryan McCormack, a coastal processes specialist with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Sea Grant, estimated that the bluffs were eroding at a rate of 3.8 to 5.6 feet a year. The report estimated the house would collapse within three years.  

Cape residents and officials fretted that, should the property fall into Cape Cod Bay, the nearby oyster beds could be physically damaged and poisoned by toxic fiberglass and refrigerant materials. Radio station CAI reported that, after years of back and forth over who would shoulder the cost of demolishing the property, a demolition crew surprised the town by starting to dismantle the house in February.  

McCormack talked to CAI as the home was demolished. “Seeing that this is happening, going into dumpsters and being taken off site, rather than next week in a storm, it is, I think, a preferable outcome for a lot of the people in the town and for the people that use the beach, the people that are eating shellfish out of Wellfleet Harbor, the people that are living all through this system,” he said. 

But the showpiece homes aren’t alone. A 2020 report by First Street Foundation, a climate data organization, found 193,000 properties in Massachusetts face a substantial risk of coastal flooding, which includes more than half of the properties in some coastal towns.   

“Water doesn’t know property lines,” said Leah Hill, Nantucket’s coastal resilience coordinator, as she stared at a grey ocean. Hill was out in the field on a late March afternoon, checking on a stretch of the island’s 88 miles of shoreline, along which perches some of the state’s priciest and most vulnerable real estate.   

A 2021 assessment of Nantucket’s coastal risk, which informed a tailored resiliency plan, slapped a $3.4 billion cumulative annual price tag on doing nothing over a 70 year period. By 2070, some 2,373 structures on the island will be at risk from flooding and erosion, the assessment found, and the costs would rack up through direct physical damage, direct and indirect economic disruption, and direct social disruption for things like relocation and health costs from injuries and mental stress.  

“We’ve got essentially three types of flooding,” explained Hill. “We’ve got flooding from rain, so stormwater flooding. We have flooding from coastal storms, when we get those big nor’easters. And then we get flooding essentially from sea level rise.”   

When sea level rises around the island, it pushes on groundwater, which then pushes fresh water up above ground. This can cause water to settle on areas that were historically dry, expanding wetlands and causing issues like basement flooding far inland. It also causes salt water to intrude into wells and make them undrinkable, Hill said.  

And then of course, there’s erosion. 

“We have one of the highest erosion rates in Massachusetts,” Hill noted. “We are essentially, as you know, a body of sand in the middle of the Atlantic.” 

Nantucket’s climate assessment noted a key tension between “current private development practices and norms” and “a future built environment that is resilient.” It continued, “given these norms, any approach that aims to restrict development is likely to be met with significant opposition and must be carefully crafted to encourage resilient development.” 

There are strains on resources created by “a growing and seasonally fluctuating population,” the assessment further stated. There is more foot traffic, more vehicular traffic, and more demand for services and utilities on one hand. On the other hand, there are more people contributing to the seasonal economy. 

On Martha’s Vineyard, a 2022 climate action plan noted that the island’s south shore beaches are eroding three to five feet every year, threatening more than 700 local jobs that could be lost in vulnerable areas and impacting travel to the island when weather events force the ferry to suspend operations.  

“Shipping, trucking, and ferrying food to the island is becoming increasingly unpredictable,” according to the Martha’s Vineyard plan, and increased demand for local food as the climate changes will be constrained by lack of affordable housing and access to affordable land.

Depending on the time of year, prime waterfront housing on the Cape and Islands is also some of the state’s emptiest.  

About 60 percent of Nantucket units are now only in seasonal, recreational, or occasional use. The island’s part-time percentage is topped only by the Martha’s Vineyard towns Chilmark and Edgartown, both of which are in the high 60s, and Truro near the northern tip of Cape Cod, which is 71 percent part-time homes. 

“We’ve been growing,” Nantucket Select Board member Matthew Fee said of the island where he grew up. “We have more houses, and more bigger and nicer houses, and more people than we’ve had at peak before.” 

Fee wears two hats: select board member running for a sixth term and owner of the local bakery and sandwich shop Something Natural. He’s always been able to tell when a summer is in high demand mode by his “bread index,” that is, how many loaves of southern Massachusetts’ classic Portuguese bread have trundled out his bakery doors. 

The island, like much of the region, has always had a strong vacation season identity. But the savvy economic move for those who want to rent out a house is now to optimize short-term rentals. A one-to-three-bed Airbnb during the prime season can run from $350 to over $1,000 a night, while some eight-bedroom homes on rental listings will still go for around $25,000 a month. 

As state Sen. Julian Cyr puts it, “the real issue is our housing market is valued basically on what a given home or apartment rents for by the night in July and August.”

Fee’s bread index theory “really holds true,” he said of late, “and we are seeing huge spikes now over a Friday-Saturday-Sunday.” 

According to the state’s recent housing needs report, half of all registered short-term rentals statewide are in Barnstable County, despite having only 6 percent of the state’s housing units. From 2009-2019, 5,800 year-round homes on Cape Cod were “lost” – taken out of the normal housing market – to seasonal use or for other reasons. New production made up part of the difference, but not enough to stem the overall loss of year-round units. 

“Thousands of homes are at risk due to increasingly severe coastal and riverine flooding,” the report’s authors wrote. “But a home doesn’t have to be flooded to be lost. … The availability of modestly priced homes and apartments is dwindling as they are acquired and upscaled by investors who sell or rent at a much higher price point.” 

Sale and rental data trackers show a slow but consistent climb for years across these seasonal communities, but the pandemic sent prices into a new stratosphere. Buyers who wanted to spend more time on idyllic shores dropped in with higher budgets, with an eye toward short-term renting or leaving it vacant except for personal vacation use. 

What once was a “life-cycle” of housing is more complicated, Fee said.  

Past a certain price point, the house “usually doesn’t get rented but still demands all the services,” Fee noted, in terms of needing town infrastructure, contractor and staff parking and housing, and utilities to serve the bigger footprints. 

And, the houses that are now being bought, renovated, and kept empty during the off-season are the ones that used to be rented to middle managers, teachers, or town workers. They now have to find somewhere else on the island to live, if possible. Workers on the Cape have a similar issue, often commuting in from the mainland rather than compete for pricey housing where they work. 

“It’s good for business and we rely on it,” Fee said of the seasonal resident ebb and flow, “but it also puts pressures on the island.” 

For Cyr, who grew up in Truro and represents the Cape and Islands, the focus on the billionaire home imperiled by nature is something of a distraction. Coastal erosion risk is “a compounding challenge” to the broader housing crunch, he said.  

“There’s going to be some places that we’re going to have to retreat,” he said, citing locations with severe erosion along the Cape Cod National Seashore in Barnstable or the bluffs of Nantucket. But Cyr and resilience experts noted that erosion is a long natural process, which itself has carved the outlines of Massachusetts’ iconic shape. “This is part of a natural rhythm of a place,” he said, pointing to areas with little development that are eroding as well. 

Martha’s Vineyard beaches have lost more than 1,400 acres since 1897, and Nantucket nearly 1,900 acres, according to the State of The Coasts report from the Trustees, which preserves places of scenic, historical, and ecological value for public use. The islands also have nearly 1,800 acres of marsh at risk from sea level rise. 

In Cyr’s experience, the focus is on the dire day-to-day impacts of places dealing with groundwater issues and ever rising tides. 

“How do you bolster Commercial Street in Provincetown, or Beach Road from Oak Bluffs to Edgartown [on Martha’s Vineyard]?” Cyr said. “How do you deal with the pretty routine flooding that’s occurring now during high tides in Nantucket? That’s what much more of the conversation is, less these bigger, more dramatic examples.” 

Climate and planning efforts in Massachusetts have tended toward the town-by-town, until recently. 

Cyr’s brisk reference to “retreat” connects to a thorny debate over managed retreat, a process of moving infrastructure, people, and property out of vulnerable areas through policies that could include options like voluntary buyouts, relocating roads, and changing zoning districts. 

A 2023 state-wide assessment of coastal communities’ willingness to consider managed retreat, reported on by CommonWealth Beacon, found that there is still significant reluctance to contemplate relocating infrastructure unless absolutely necessary. Chief concerns were the lack of places to relocate to, political feasibility, and a loss of tax revenue – especially when it comes to high-priced real estate. 

Since then, some municipalities have moved ahead with plans to consider significant changes.  

The small coastal town of Hull, a peninsula including the particularly vulnerable Hampton Circle neighborhood, is engaged in planning efforts that include elevating certain homes or planning for a buyout program encouraging homeowners to move out of an area with a particularly high risk of flooding. 

In Falmouth – which considered a plan to make a historic retreat from its iconic Surf Drive coastal roadway in the face of sea level rise, flooding, and other impacts of climate change – there is a desire to push the conversation off as long as possible. According to The Enterprise, town officials recently learned that, because of an eelgrass bed near the beach, the town will no longer be allowed to dump new sand onto Surf Drive Beach to stall erosion and protect the roadway. 

Beach committee chairwoman Barbara Schneider said people need to face the fact that Surf Drive Beach will disappear. “We are no longer talking about saving beach,” Schneider said, according to The Enterprise. “All we’re talking about right now is saving a road and people’s homes.” 

Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard, both of which occasionally lose coastal houses to erosion, are working to refine their resilience plans. 

Hill, from Nantucket, is putting out a bid soon for a retreat and relocation program that would incorporate a climate risk assessment and put procedures in place for contacting and technically assisting homeowners if they need to relocate their home – either to a safer perch or for demolition. 

Resiliency advocates are somewhat limited in their efforts because of public-private barriers. Nantucket’s climate plan is only tailored to town-owned land, where it can build up sea walls or beaches. 

“We don’t have control of what private property owners want to do on their property as far as risk management, if anything, unless it’s through a regulation,” Hill said. “So we’re focused on mitigating flooding and erosion out to 2070 on our most critical roadways – the way to get to the Steamship Authority and all of those critical assets.” 

State building code regulations can create some obligations. For instance, if an owner in the downtown Nantucket flood plain wants to do renovations that would cost more than 50 percent of the market value of the structure, the whole building must be brought up to code including flood mitigation measures. But, the parcel-by-parcel process can be unwieldy. 

A new report from Massachusetts’s Unlocking Housing Production Commission on meeting the state’s housing goals recommends creating a separate residential building code so that projects that cost a higher percentage of the total building value will have to meet higher flood protection and other climate requirements, and vice versa. 

Given the speed of erosion on the islands, finding a way to contact owners if their houses are in trouble can be essential. It’s a quirk of the wealthy seasonal community – on some streets the owners of many properties are corporations or LLCs, not a person, so the town will send a letter to the corporate address if there is a structural concern.  

There may be a chance for less piecemeal planning on the horizon; at least, less piecemeal than town-by-town. 

Recent initiatives on coastal climate resilience planning and seasonal housing stressors offer a chance for more coordination between regions. 

In late 2023, the Healey administration launched ResilientCoasts, an initiative that promises a “comprehensive framework” to coordinate local and state efforts. According to public presentations in March, a final draft plan is expected this spring, which will establish coastal resilience districts based on geography, coastal characteristics, and risks, as well as identify strategies to support local and regional efforts to improve resilience coastwide. 

“Climate change presents a unique opportunity to build safer communities – but no municipality can do this alone,” said Maria Hardiman, spokesperson for the Massachusetts Office of Coastal Zone Management, in a statement. Though no exact figure is attached to the effort yet, Hardiman said “for every dollar we invest in resilience now, we save $13 in damages and economic impacts in the long run. These investments are critical to protecting public safety and our economy, including the Massachusetts tourism industry and access to beautiful outdoor spaces.”  

Discussion about who should pay for resilience improvements reminds select board member Fee of debates about sewer access decades ago as the island expanded.  

There is a “natural tension,” he said, between the homeowners who need upgraded infrastructure because of modern building demands and those who are adequately served by the older systems.  

“One side says it’s a common good and we all should pay for it, and one side says half the island doesn’t require sewer,” he recalled, so why put them on the hook? After years of debate, the island split the coverage and the tax burden – balancing the costs between the current tax base, those who use the sewer, and areas with expected future users. 

That sewer system, which covers about 60 percent of the island, is now actively endangered by erosion and in need of quick remedial action.  

Similarly, the question of resilience often turns onto a question of “who is this for?”  

Nantucket’s resiliency plan lays out about $1 billion of investments to help the town weather the changing climate, and voters at the annual town meeting approved splitting the island into resiliency districts based on their unique challenges. Town officials have mulled – to residents’ chagrin – imposing fees on property owners who stand to benefit the most from the resilience projects. 

Dittbrenner, the vice president of natural resources for The Trustees, said the communal stakes of preventing climate impacts are rising.  

“We haven’t necessarily had conflicts, but we’ve needed to work more with our adjacent landowners, because some of the impacts of climate change and increased flooding and erosion, of course, extend beyond our boundaries,” she said. 

Property owners can have strong aesthetic feelings that sometimes conflict with conservation interests, Dittbrenner noted. Natural brush can hold a beach in place but look untidy, netting to protect sea bird habitats can seem visually disruptive, and sometimes the solid appearance of a sea wall is more comforting than a natural wetlands barrier that might be more appropriate.  

Given the cost of some erosion interventions, like beach nourishment, groups like The Trustees are trying to find a balance for municipalities when there are overlapping property interests. 

The Trustees co-owns the Coskata-Coatue Wildlife Refuge, some 1,117 acres of rapidly thinning barrier beach that stretches around to create Nantucket Harbor, with the Nantucket Conservation Foundation. 

“We can’t afford to spend millions of dollars to come and place a bunch of sand on the beach just to shore it up in that way, because that is really transient and would only last for a few years and costs a lot of money,” said Dittbrenner. “So the cost benefit isn’t there. But if there are nature-based ways that we can improve the resilience of that buffer and increase the habitat, then that’s a mutual benefit that makes sense.” 

For that sort of project, groups can usually go to the state and federal government. Dittbrenner expects the cost will now fall more to the state given the pullback of many federal funds.  

A state grant will cover the last permitting phase of raising Argilla Road in Ipswich, which is the only road with access to interstate tourist draw Crane Estate and Crane Beach. The road has been flooding frequently on the king tide, which are exceptionally high tides tied to moon cycles. Dittbrenner said The Trustees and the city are partnering to nail down a design for the project, but have secured funding from the state. 

Town budgets are tight, Fee noted, and municipalities with areas of sparse but vulnerable housing can be stuck paying for outdated obligations. 

“The state rules have to catch up with the reality of climate change,” he said. “A town road can’t be abandoned if someone’s [living] on it, but what happens when the road goes into the ocean?”   

Don Vaccaro, a businessman and philanthropist who co-founded Ticketnetwork Inc., had owned a Sheep Pond Road property on an-erosion threatened stretch of Nantucket since 2014 and purchased the house and lot next door a decade later for $200,000, putting about the same amount into renovating and eventually demolishing the property. He demolished the second house at the town’s request just six months after buying it, for a $400,000 loss. 

“I was able to use it one week with my family and kids in both houses, which was a priceless experience, so it was worth it in the end,” he told the Nantucket Current in January. 

Housing dynamics are involved in an awkward push-and-pull with climate and open space interests. Protected coastline and green space are desirable to nearby buyers and renters, but also drive up housing costs by limiting available land. And when the impacts of climate change get too pronounced, the land value tanks. 

The former owners of the small Sheep Pond Road house bought it for $2 million in 1988 and held on for decades as the shoreline receded, imperiling the structure. Even local housing nonprofits weren’t interested after three storms carved out the little remaining beach. When they sold it to Vacarro, they got back just 10 percent of their initial investment.  

“Most of these properties that you see that have this dramatic erosion loss,” Cyr said, pointing as an example to a house that had to be relocated at Ballston Beach in Truro two years ago, “these are seasonal homes. These are second homes. I think I hear much more from concerned constituents who may not be living at the water’s edge, but whose homeowners insurance rates have gone up astronomically, or they can’t get homeowners insurance.” 

The state should be able to step in and offer assistance, said Cyr, who supports efforts to establish a flood insurance market and has filed legislation to offer incentives and encouragement to make home investments that would be more resilient to a changing climate. 

The majority of residents are not scrambling to save million-dollar homes, but demand for housing has made even risky bets seem like a good option if the buyer doesn’t mind a short use window or taking a loss that costs as much as buying a studio apartment in Boston. 

And as in the case of the former owner of the demolished Sheep Pond Road house, buying a home in 1988 with a wide stretch between the house and the beach is no guarantee of safety. When the ocean comes, if it’s every homeowner for themself, the options are demolition or a fire sale. 

The post ‘Water doesn’t know property lines’: Where Massachusetts’s climate and housing crises meet appeared first on CommonWealth Beacon.

A correction has been added to this story.

AFTER GAS BILLS spiked across Massachusetts, state officials are reducing the proposed budget for the Mass Save energy efficiency program by $500 million – a move environmentalists call “short-sighted” and argue will increase costs for residents in the long run. 

The Department of Public Utilities approved a budget of $4.5 billion for Mass Save – which helps homes and businesses become more energy efficient through projects paid for by a surcharge on electricity and gas bills – for the next three years, after originally proposing a $5 billion budget. The DPU said the reduction would lower total residential program budgets by 25 percent for gas customers and 15 percent for electric customers. It is unclear what impact the cut will have on actual gas and electric bills. [CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story incorrectly said that residents would see a 25 percent decrease in their gas bills and a 15 percent decrease in their electric bills.]

Since 2013, when Mass Save launched, the program has provided $31 billion in total benefits to customers in terms of energy savings, with another $13.7 billion projected between 2025 and 2027. But as many saw their gas bills spike – some saw an increase of up to 30 percent – the program came under intense scrutiny because it accounted for about 60 percent of the rate increases for some gas bills. 

“Like a lot of stuff in the climate world, this decision is going to save people money in the short term but cost us more money in the long term,” said Vickash Mohanka, head of the Massachusetts Sierra Club. “It’s saving $100 now, but 10 years from now we have to pay $1,000, which is how a lot of the math of climate cost works.” 

Mass Save – which is run by six utility companies, including Eversource and National Grid – is an integral part of the state’s plan to become carbon neutral by 2050, which relies heavily on homeowners decarbonizing their heating systems. Within this framework, Massachusetts aims to convert 500,000 households to heat pumps by 2030, but even that target – which was set before Mass Save saw its budget pared back – would fall short of what the state needs to do to meet its climate goals. 

“This plan, as ambitious as it is, actually only gets us to about half or less than half of the greenhouse gas reduction that we need to have according to our clean energy and climate plan,” said Kyle Murray, Massachusetts program director at the Acadia Center, a non-profit research and advocacy organization dedicated to combatting climate. “Even this plan is a compromise in itself.” 

The sticker shock of the high gas bills is partly due to an unseasonably cold winter and the fact that Mass Save only increases its rate once every three years, Murray said. The increase in the Mass Save budget barely keeps up with inflation, he added, noting that the cuts were “disappointing” and “short-sighted.” (In the previous three-year plan, the program had a budget of $3.94 billion.) 

Consumers see their rates increase every year thanks to a variety of factors, including the condition of gas pipeline infrastructure, the price of natural gas on the global market, and inflation.  

There is little oversight of how utility companies charge for gas infrastructure maintenance and upgrades. Priya Gandbhir, a staff attorney at the nonprofit Conservation Law Foundation, argued that the Legislature should give the DPU more power to decide on whether proposed projects are truly necessary and look into possible alternatives that are more aligned with the state’s goals like geothermal. Building gas infrastructure, she said, is “a great way for the gas company to make money” because they are able to recover the cost and an additional percentage of profit from any gas pipelines they put in or maintain from ratepayers, which incentivizes more investments in fossil fuel infrastructure. 

Other than the budget decrease, the department largely left the proposed Mass Save plan as is and directed the utilities that run the program to decide where to make cuts. The utilities will have until May 1 to come back to the department with suggestions. 

The department did direct the utilities to seek forms of funding for the Mass Save program in addition to ratepayer funding by collaborating with the Legislature. Currently, the program is funded entirely by ratepayers.  

“It is no longer sustainable for ratepayers alone to bear the full costs of the Commonwealth’s goals for building decarbonization,” the DPU order said. “Alternative sources of program funding, whether through legislative appropriations or bond authorizations, could supplement ratepayer funds to drive the more rapid achievement of savings and benefits from the programs. Federal funds, whether replacing or supplementing program funds, also carry great promise.” 

Several environmental and climate leaders, including Murray, have advocated for alternative ways of funding the program but acknowledge the challenge of funding the program through the Legislature, particularly in an environment where federal funding for climate projects is at risk. 

Climate advocates worry the budget cuts will affect the Mass Save initiatives designed to help lower-income and minority households. The plan, as it stood before the $500 million decrease, would invest $1.9 billion into equity-related efforts, including $1.3 billion in incentives for low- and moderate-income customers.  

This is a large part of the proposed budget, and Mohanka said that this type of equity work requires a large budget and coordinated outreach. 

But Mohanka emphasized the importance of Mass Save to Massachusetts’s climate goals even with the budget decrease. 

“Even with this cut, it’s still going to be one of the biggest per capita energy efficiency programs in the country,” said Mohanka. “It will decrease the availability of some funding, but overall we’ll still have a lot of capacity for energy efficiency in the state.” 

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AVERAGE SPRING TEMPERATURES across Massachusetts have warmed by approximately two and a half degrees Fahrenheit over the past 55 years, according to a new analysis.

Suffolk County, which includes Boston, has seen the highest temperature rise, with an increase of 2.9 degrees, followed closely by Nantucket County at 2.8 degrees, researchers at Climate Central, a nonprofit group of climate scientists and communications experts, have found. Franklin County, Norfolk County, Worcester County, and Middlesex County all warmed by 2.6 degrees – a trend that can lead to an earlier and more intense fire season, contribute to drought, prolong seasonal allergies, and alter the growing season.

Climate Central analyzed monthly temperature data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration – the federal agency tasked with predicting and monitoring weather and climate – in the months of March to May from 1970 to 2024 to find the average change in temperature over those 55 years.

“We continue to burn coal and oil and methane gas and put this heat-trapping pollution into the atmosphere,” said Shel Winkley, a meteorologist with Climate Central. “That is the reason that we’re seeing the temperature shifts both in the wintertime, which is the fastest shrinking season for most of the country, and the springtime, which we’re seeing arrive earlier for most of our locations across the country. All of that ties back to the heat traffic pollution that we put into the atmosphere.”

The Paris Agreement has set a goal of not exceeding a maximum global temperature rise of 1.5 degrees Celsius past pre-industrial levels, but last year was the warmest year on record and breached that threshold for the first time. This does not mean that the 1.5-degree warming mark has been permanently crossed, but this is a warning sign, Winkley added.

Massachusetts experienced a particularly severe fire season last fall, with more acres burning in October and November than in the two years prior. Drought conditions, worsened by higher temperatures, have made it easier for wildfires to ignite and spread, experts say.

David Celino, chief fire warden at the Department of Conservation and Recreation, said that the data on the warming of the spring season corresponds exactly with the experience of fire managers across the northeast. As warmer temperatures melt snow earlier, surface vegetation – leaves, pine needles, and grasses dry out faster, leaving them more susceptible to burning.

“It’s not surprising and it maps so well,” said Celino. “There’s a common feeling that our spring fire is now starting earlier in March than it traditionally used to, and part of that reason is going into spring with warmer temperatures or sort of warmer environment.”

This month, fires have been reported in areas like the Cape Cod region where the snowpack has melted, according to Celino.

When the “snowpack” melts faster than the ground thaws, the water from the snow is less likely to be absorbed into groundwater or go into nearby bodies of water which in turn leads to fewer water stores for later in the year. 

“Higher temperatures contribute significantly to drought because the water that falls evaporates more quickly,” said Julia Blatt, executive director of Mass Rivers Alliance. “So then, you’ve got dry soils and dry streams, and when there is rainfall, less of the water makes it into streams or groundwater or lakes or ponds.”

Some cities and states in the country have experienced much more dramatic warming with average spring temperatures jumping 6.8 degrees in Reno, Nevada, 6.4 degrees in El Paso, Texas, and 6.1 degrees in Tucson, Arizona.

Jennifer Francis, a senior scientist at Woodwell Climate Research Center on Cape Cod, said that due to climate change, there is bound to be “more volatility and more surprises” when it comes to extreme weather events across the globe.

“This is still very alarming,” said Francis. “It’s not unexpected. It’s not a surprise. But it really should be ringing alarm bells in everybody’s heads more than it is. Even though the temperature or change seems really small, we’re already seeing the impacts of this warming happen across the globe and in very different ways but all very devastating to the people who live in those communities that are affected.”

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THE ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION Agency has begun an effort to revoke California’s vehicle emissions waivers adopted by Massachusetts, 15 other states, and the District of Columbia to set emission standards beyond federal requirements for cars and trucks.

California has been able to set stricter standards for the emission of hydrocarbons, carbon dioxide, and nitrogen dioxide through more than a hundred different waivers that it has submitted to the federal agency since 1967. Massachusetts adopted California’s vehicle emissions standards in 1990 after Congress allowed other states to adopt the approved standards. But, the Trump administration sent three of California’s most recent emissions waivers to Congress for review on February 14 under the Congressional Review Act, a statute that allows lawmakers to assess and overturn rules made by federal agencies.

If Congress nullifies the waivers, the states will lose an important tool to help reach their climate goals, advocates say.

The three waivers in question – which were all approved under the Biden administration – are the Heavy-duty Omnibus Regulation, which requires manufacturers to sell lower emissions engines for heavy-duty vehicles like trucks; the Advanced Clean Trucks Regulation, which requires a certain percentage of a manufacturers’ overall sales to include sales of zero-emission vehicles; and the Advanced Clean Cars II Regulation, which increases the percentage of new car sales required to be zero-emission vehicles with a goal of reaching 100 percent zero-emissions vehicles by 2035.

The EPA did not respond to a request for comment but said in a press release that “the two waivers regarding trucks not only increased the cost of those vehicles but also increased the costs of goods and the cost of living for American families across the country.” On the campaign trail, the Trump campaign’s press secretary said Trump would revoke the waiver on gasoline-powered cars “on day one.”

Transportation is the largest single source of greenhouse gas emissions in Massachusetts, responsible for nearly 40 percent of statewide emissions in 2021. The state’s strategy for reducing this pollution relies on the Advanced Clean Cars waiver, which officials see as a key policy in promoting the purchase of electric vehicles. Last year, the growth rate of electric vehicle sales slowed nationwide, jeopardizing 2025 decarbonization targets for the transportation sector. 

“We’re not on pace to meet our goals currently, and one of the most effective tools we have to reduce emissions is to begin or accelerate the pace at which we’re electrifying vehicles in our cities,” said David Melly, the legislative director at the Environmental League of Massachusetts. “The [emissions standards] are designed to [help] states to coordinate regionally to establish supply chains and create a demand overall for more environmentally friendly vehicles.”

Sending the waivers to Congress for review is an unprecedented move, said Emily Green, a senior attorney at the Conservation Law Foundation. The Congressional Review Act has not previously been applied to these types of waivers in the past. The law allows congressional oversight over “rules” that federal agencies make, but the waivers are not “rules,” according to Green.

“We need to slash climate pollution from cars and trucks to avoid the worst impacts of climate change,” said Emily Green, a senior attorney at the Conservation Law Foundation. “The Trump administration is illegally trying to avoid a public process to revoke authority for states, including Massachusetts, to protect the air, the environment, and to give their citizens the choice to move on from gas-guzzling cars and trucks.”

Congress has 60 days to act. There will likely be legal challenges around the EPA’s decision to submit these waivers to Congress as there have been with many of the Trump administration’s slashing of the federal budget without congressional approval.

The Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection, which oversees the vehicle emissions standards in the state, said that the office will “review the full scope of the Trump Administration’s challenge to longstanding vehicle emissions regulations, which have improved air quality and public health across Massachusetts.”

The federal Clean Air Act of 1967 preempted state governments from being able to set their own air pollutant emissions standards for motor vehicles and engines but provided an exemption for California. Under the law, California can apply to EPA for a waiver from the federal preemption. The state has received over 100 federal preemption waivers as of 2024. 

During his last administration, President Donald Trump revoked some of California’s waivers in 2019 and faced a legal challenge from 23 states. The Biden administration reinstated the waivers and also faced a legal challenge from oil companies and 17 states that argued the federal government had exceeded its authority. In December 2024, the Supreme Court declined to review a constitutional challenge to California’s authority to enforce its emissions rules.

The trucking industry has applauded the Trump administration for trying to revoke the emissions standards. Kevin Weeks, executive director of the Trucking Association of Massachusetts, said in a statement that his group appreciates the EPA submitting the waivers to Congress.

“The electrification of the medium- and heavy-duty truck segment presents significant challenges,” said Weeks. “The current state of technology, affordability, applicability, and infrastructure are not adequately prepared for widespread electrification in this sector.”

Melly said that the increased short-term costs of implementing vehicle emissions standards should be weighed against the costs the American public already bears because of vehicle emissions. “We can’t keep kicking the can down the road because we know that these emissions have serious impacts on public health,” he said. “Delaying has more costs associated with it and we’ve got to start somewhere.”

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IN THE SAME week a federal judge reiterated his order that all federal funding be disbursed as appropriated by Congress, yet more grants – the latest targeting emissions from diesel engines – became unavailable to Massachusetts state agencies as part of the Trump administration’s funding freeze, according to state officials.

Three grants that are administered through the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection have been marked “suspended” as of February 13 in the federal funding portal that states use to request allocated funds. These grants — the State Clean Diesel Grant, the Diesel Emission Reduction Act Program, and the Clean Diesel Grant – represent over $3 million in total funding and have been withheld despite a federal judge’s order that all frozen funding be restored immediately. 

All three grants are part of a federal law, the Diesel Emission Reduction Act, and are given out through the US Environmental Protection Agency. Molly Vaseliou, a spokesperson for the agency, said in an emailed statement the EPA has acted in accordance with the court order and had reinstated funding from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act by February 4. Vaseliou did not explain why Massachusetts officials couldn’t access certain funds but added that “EPA personnel have identified certain grants programs as having potential inconsistencies with necessary financial and oversight procedural requirements or grant conditions of awards or programs.”

Diesel fuel tends to be used in trucks, buses, SUVs, vans, and other vehicles. Clean diesel grant programs aim to reduce emissions from diesel fuels which are refined from crude oil by incentivizing owners of diesel vehicles to purchase new, cleaner vehicles and engines or retrofit more efficient engines into older vehicles. The program also funds idling reduction technologies for vehicles and engines. Exposure to diesel exhaust can cause serious health conditions like asthma and respiratory illnesses. As with other fossil fuels, burning diesel also releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, which contributes to the global climate crisis.

One of President Trump’s first actions in office was to issue an executive order that directed his administration to withhold hundreds of billions of dollars in funding for different environmental and infrastructure projects. A federal judge in Rhode Island issued a temporary restraining order to block the funding freeze on January 31 after attorneys general in 22 states – including Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Campbell – and the District of Columbia filed a lawsuit to block the executive order.

However, the Trump administration has continued to withhold funds. As of today, in addition to the clean diesel grants, the state cannot access funds for Solar for All, the state energy program that’s funded through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, and two air monitoring programs. Solar for All is the biggest program that is currently suspended with a total grant of $156 million. Together, the total of the frozen grants is about $168 million.

Governor Maura Healey spoke about the ongoing impact that the federal funding freeze has had on the state on GBH’s Boston Public Radio on February 7. 

“Even today as we speak we have not had funding turned back on for a number of areas,” said Healey. “And that is very disruptive. It’s harmful to our state, our residents, to our businesses, and to our economy. That unfortunately is what we find ourselves up against right now.”

Barbara Kates-Garnick, a professor at the Fletcher School at Tufts University and the former Undersecretary of Energy for the state said the funding freezes will make it really difficult for states to plan climate policy.

“This impacts our climate goals enormously because finding sources of funding is part of your planning process at the state level,” said Kates-Garnick. “You set your goals with that plan in mind and now these grants get withdrawn and everything is upended. In the short term, it’s very difficult to figure out another way to make up all of this missing money.”

The Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection and the Massachusetts Department of Energy Resources both submitted declarations to the federal court on February 6 citing the harm that withholding the grants would cause to “public health, public safety, and the environment, as well as to the public welfare in economic effects from these programs.”

“While MassDEP would strive to seek replacement funding for the important programs supported by these federal grants, replacing this magnitude of funds would be virtually impossible, particularly with the required expediency given that much work is already underway, or critical to perform immediately,” said Bonnie Heiple, the head of the Massachusetts DEP, in her declaration. 

The attorney general promised to keep fighting the funding freeze and defending the judge’s temporary restraining order.

“The Court’s order is clear: the Trump Administration cannot continue to freeze essential funding while our case proceeds,” said a spokesperson for Campbell’s office. “This coalition of attorneys general will continue fighting to safeguard these vital resources and hold the Administration accountable for violations of the law.”

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AN ARCANE STATE BOARD, known to few outside the world of design and construction, is the setting of a furious clash the outcome of which could influence the amount of climate-curdling emissions that pour out of chimneys, as well as the future supply of housing in Massachusetts, where affordable homes are already scarce.

The Board of Building Regulation and Standards might seem an odd venue for the drama that has unfolded there. The BBRS adopts and administers the statewide building code and the building energy code, sets of rules that are important but would bore the average reader to tears. It is the domain of professionals who think in cubic feet, seismic loads, and kilowatt hours. Now, the problems of the world are before it.

While much attention has been focused on reducing emissions from power plants and cars, commercial, residential, and industrial buildings in Massachusetts collectively spew more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere than either the power or transportation sectors. Commercial and residential buildings in Massachusetts emit about as much harmful gas into the air as the entire transportation sector.

That’s leading activists like Dr. Gaurab Basu, a Somerville physician who says the climate crisis will ultimately produce a public health crisis of increased deaths and hospitalizations, to insert themselves into the byzantine world of building codes. “As a parent of two young children and as a physician, I’m deeply concerned about this. I realize that the crisis forces us to do things that feel uncomfortable, to be pushing at a scale that feels like it’s untenable, but that’s the situation we’re in,” Basu told the board at its November meeting.

Climate activists like Basu, who have paid careful heed to the dire warnings of the world’s scientists, have pressed the BBRS to put out a net-zero energy code. The idea is that under a more stringent code newly constructed and newly renovated buildings would produce virtually no greenhouse gases, notching a small but meaningful victory in the worldwide campaign to avoid a climate catastrophe. That could be accomplished with tighter construction, energy efficient appliances, on-site renewable energy generation such as solar roofs, or under certain circumstances, a financial arrangement to procure renewable power from off-site.

Real estate agents and some builders are strongly opposed to the net-zero campaign, arguing that piling new requirements on top of existing construction costs would grind development to a halt, squeezing home prices, and exacerbating the region’s affordable housing crisis.

“We encourage an energy-efficient code, but we need to go where it makes sense from a cost standpoint and a technology standpoint,” said Tamara Small, CEO of NAIOP Massachusetts, which represents commercial developers. “We may get there, but we’re not there yet.”

Because of the schedule for adopting new building codes in Massachusetts, which statutorily follows the issuance of the International Energy Conservation Code, the big decision over whether to include a net zero code in that update won’t come to a head for another couple years – probably 2021 at the earliest. But environmentalists and business interests have already begun to skirmish and jockey for position.

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Meanwhile, activists are making other plays at the local level to try to cut down on climate pollutants. In late November, Brookline’s town meeting adopted a bylaw to prohibit the installation of oil and gas pipes in new construction and renovations, which would give the market a big shove toward electrical appliances and home-heating systems. It was the first municipality to take that step. All town bylaws must undergo a review by the attorney general’s office to see whether they align with state laws and the constitution, so opponents still have a chance to kill the policy. Arlington town manager Adam Chapdelaine said on Twitter that depending on how the attorney general rules, he would be interested in trying the same sort of thing in his town.

From a global perspective, environmental initiatives undertaken so far have failed to slow – much less reverse – the output of greenhouse gas emissions into earth’s atmosphere. For the past decade, emissions have grown 1.5 percent annually, and emissions must drop sharply over the next decade to avoid the worst ravages of climate change, according to the latest United Nations report. The blight, disease and flooding that unchecked climate change will unleash is all the more reason, according to advocates, to take the necessary steps in Massachusetts to significantly reduce the amount of greenhouse gas that seeps out of our homes and workplaces.

BOARD MEETING SHOWDOWN

The Board of Building Regulation and Standards is nestled under several layers of government bureaucracy. It is contained within the Division of Professional Licensure, which is an agency of the Office of Consumer Affairs and Business Regulation, which is itself a component of the Executive Office of Housing and Economic Development, whose secretary, Mike Kennealy, serves at the pleasure of Gov. Charlie Baker.

The 11-member board is presided over by John Couture, who doubles as the town of Sutton’s building inspector. Couture, who decline an interview and said he doesn’t talk to any news reporters, will see his term come to an end December 31. Couture will remain on the board, which will elect its next chairperson, according to a spokesperson.

The BBRS holds its monthly meetings all over the state. When in Boston, it generally uses a conference room in a non-descript state office building across the Massachusetts Turnpike from Chinatown. That is where the board convened on a Tuesday in early November for a session where net-zero proponents and opponents each warned of a calamitous future.

Over the course of several hours, members of the public alternately pressed the board for stricter environmental standards to avoid a complete environmental collapse, or cautioned against rash action that could further balloon housing costs or threaten the chimney and fireplace industry. Couture and other board members listened respectfully to some of the testimony, but they were at times dismissive or skeptical of environmentalists pitching the net-zero idea.

Jacob Knowles, director of sustainable design at BR+A, a national engineering firm, told the board that net-zero building makes for cheaper and healthier living spaces, and his firm found that making buildings net-zero adds less than 1 percent to the construction costs. To buttress his case, Knowles unfurled a letter signed by roughly 1,500 people and 80 companies, including prominent architecture firms, calling for the development and adoption of a net-zero code.

“Take that with you,” Couture replied curtly, after Knowles displayed the letter on the table. “We don’t want your prop.”

Board members also occasionally debated with commenters, questioning the philosophical underpinnings of their advocacy.

“There are a lot of developers that will do the code minimum, period. Period. So we need to raise all boats,” argued Jim Stanislaski, an architect for the international firm Gensler, who supports creating a net-zero code. “And incentives are great; carrots are great. But we need to move out of the voluntary into the compulsory.”

To Michael McDowell, a board member and homebuilder, that sounded like an indictment of people’s intelligence.

“The more we regulate, the less we give citizens of Massachusetts an opportunity to make a choice,” McDowell said. “In other words, you’re almost saying to the citizens, ‘You’re too stupid to make the right choice so we’re going to make it for you. Congratulations.’”

Stanislaski protested that he wasn’t calling people stupid. Then Couture jumped in to question what would happen if the highest standards were used for structural integrity and fire protection requirements – as opposed to energy efficiency.

“If we started saying, you know what, ‘We think that we should have 200-pound roof-loads, just because it’s good,’” said Couture. “There are ramifications for that.”

To deal with these knotty issues, the board had tasked its Energy Advisory Committee – which is made up of other building professionals and engineers – to “show us what net-zero looks like,” according to Couture. But around the same time, the board changed the composition of that committee so that it tilts more toward the views of the construction industry. In October, the board decided to add three contractors to the advisory committee and remove spots designated for a utility representative, an indoor air quality expert, and an appliance expert.

To those hoping to push the state towards a net-zero code, the committee shakeup seemed part of a strategy to thwart that effort.

“It seems like a big shift to say, ‘Take off some of the energy experts and put on contractors,’” said Knowles in an interview. “At face value, that screams to me of trying to shift the whole dialogue towards a more conservative solution.”

A discussion about the shakeup raised hackles among board members during their November meeting when member Richard Crowley suggested that “people on the ground know more about what’s going on” than architects or engineers who rely on books.

“Just stop. Really stop,” board member Kerry Dietz, an architect, interjected. “It is insulting to those of us who are professionals.”

According to Couture, the shakeup was based on a directive from Division of Professional Licensure commissioner Diane Symonds, who wanted more input from “stakeholders.”

“Just because we added three contractors doesn’t mean we added three villains,” said Couture. “We added people that are actually building this stuff.”

Couture also expressed his irritation at an email circulated about the advisory committee issue that he said was “mean” and attacked the board’s integrity. Couture appeared to have been talking about a missive from the Massachusetts Climate Action Network encouraging people to attend the November meeting. While that email criticized the board’s changes to the advisory committee as a “big step backwards,” it did not suggest ulterior motives or make any overt attacks on the board’s integrity.

Advocates on both sides of the issue will have plenty of time to hone their arguments. Under a 2008 state law dubbed the Green Communities Act – which was one of Deval Patrick’s signature environmental accomplishments as governor – the state must meet or exceed the standards of the International Energy Conservation Code, which is developing an update for 2021. That would present the next obvious opportunity to push for a net-zero code.

WHAT WOULD NET-ZERO MEAN?

Net-zero construction is already happening in Massachusetts, and the principle of a net-zero code is pretty straightforward: eliminate the carbon footprint of buildings by enhancing their efficiency and using renewable energy sources for all power. But advocates are fuzzy on the details. As of November, only the American Institute of Architects had submitted a fleshed out proposal to the BBRS.

The AIA plan would give builders a couple of options to determine a building’s energy needs either through a formula or by measuring the building’s actual energy performance. Then the AIA plan would require a corresponding amount of renewable energy generation either installed on-site or procured off-site. The AIA net-zero plan would apply to new commercial, institutional, and mid-level or high-rise residential buildings.

There is one big complication with applying a net-zero standard to urban development. Residential towers and commercial skyscrapers don’t have enough space on their roofs to provide solar power to all the floors below.

“High rise is extremely challenging,” said Stanislaski, the architect who supports shifting to net-zero.

One irony is that high rise developments can help reduce carbon emissions in the transportation sector, especially if they are near transit, because they tend to make neighborhoods denser and more walkable.

It’s not impossible to build a net-zero skyscraper. Solar power and wind energy can be procured off-site, and under the current mix of government incentives, it can even be cheaper than using fossil fuels, according to Knowles, who acknowledged that a renewable energy requirement presents new risks for developers.

“They want to minimize risk, so if there is any potential volatility, they want to avoid that, but I don’t see how that supersedes the need to address climate change and minimize our carbon footprint,” Knowles said.

Small, the NAIOP Massachusetts CEO who represents commercial real estate developers, has a bleaker view on what sort of effects a net-zero standard could exert on the marketplace.

“When you then talk about adding on something that makes a building zero net-energy, it’s going to be cost-prohibitive, so nothing’s going to be built. The numbers simply don’t work. And I don’t think when we have a housing crisis that really is necessarily the best approach,” Small said. “I think we have to proceed with caution because the unintended consequences could literally be no new commercial office space, lab space, retail, multi-family, mixed-use, you name it.”

Other areas with high housing costs have pushed the construction industry towards net-zero standards. California has instituted new requirements and set goals to phase-in net-zero construction for new and existing buildings over the next decade. New York is taking a number of steps to encourage net-zero developments and retrofit existing buildings to make them more energy efficient.

Massachusetts has made significant strides in energy efficiency. For nearly a decade, the Bay State has earned top marks from the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy for its policies, including the relatively stringent measures adopted by the BBRS.

But given the scale of threat posed by global warming, many believe more should be done, and Knowles said the changes needed in construction are well within reach.

“This is not pie-in-the-sky. This is not some sort of dream fantasy idea. This is something that we’re doing consistently now on large, complex urban and non-urban projects,” Knowles said. “I have not come across a project that cannot achieve these goals, and in every single case we’ve been able to prove it’s cost-effective.”

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